Climate Emergency UK has released The Local Climate Report: State of UK council climate action, containing the key headline statistics from the 2025 Council Climate Action Scorecards alongside in-depth analysis from sector experts
The report looks at the overall trends of UK councils’ climate action giving a comprehensive oversight of where progress has been made in the last two years and where action is still lacking, following the release of Climate Emergency UK’s first comprehensive analysis, the 2023 Action Scorecards.
The 2025 Action Scorecards demonstrated that council climate action has improved across the board, with the average score increasing from 32%, in 2023 to 38%. However, given many councils have 2030 net zero targets this improvement is not fast enough.
Louise Marix Evans, director of Quantum Strategy & Technology and author of the Climate Change Committee’s Local Authorities and the 6th carbon budget report, said, “This report offers a concise snapshot of council climate action, shows what is possible, and issues a call for more comprehensive and ambitious action.
“Council climate action is at a crossroads and as in Scotland, England’s councils should also have a legal duty to deliver the Climate Change Act and contribute to national carbon budgets and adaptation targets so they can go further and faster in creating a fairer, resilient, cleaner and greener UK that is visible and beneficial locally.”
Key measures that have improved:
- 90% of local authorities have reduced mowing or created wildflower habitat in their area (increase from 80% in 2023)
- 18% of planning authorities have policies to build net zero homes (increase from 14% in 2023)
- 70% of authorities published an annual climate report (increase from 63% in 2023)
Key measures that have stalled or decreased:
- 51% (↓8) of authorities have a renewable energy tariff or generate renewable energy equal to 20% of their own energy use than in 2023 (decrease from 59% in 2023)
- 35% (↓8) of authorities have lobbied the UK government or devolved administrations for further climate action (decrease from 43% in 2023)
For the first time, Climate Emergency UK also published an infographic on climate adaptation, pulling together the key statistics from the Scorecards that are focused on resilience.
Key climate adaptation statistics include:
- 34% of councils include climate risks in their Corporate Risk Register (no comparison to 2023 due to change in marking)
- 62% of planning authorities set the highest water efficiency standards for new builds (increase from 59% in 2023)
- 96% of local authorities offer funding for residents to retrofit their homes (same as in 2023)
Isaac Beevor, partnerships director at Climate Emergency UK, said, “While we have seen improvement across many measures in the Scorecards, no council is acting at the scale and pace that the climate crisis deserves. We need councils to embed climate action across every area of the council from their decision making to their transport plans and projects to support residents retrofitting their homes.”
You can read the report in full here.
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